BILBAO.- Azkuna Zentroa - Alhóndiga Bilbao, Bilbao City Council's Centre for Society and Contemporary Culture, opened its 2025 exhibition programme with the project Escala 1:1 by the artist Ixone Sádaba.
In the presentation of this exhibition produced by Azkuna Zentroa was attended by Gonzalo Olabarria, Councillor for Culture and Governance of Bilbao City Council, the artist Ixone Sádaba, and the curator of the exhibition, Carles Guerra. The presentation was also attended by Ianire Anaya, assistant to the General Management of Giroa - Veolia, Azkuna Zentroa's partner in this project.
The exhibition produced by Azkuna Zentroa displays the photographic research of the Biscayan artist on the material, symbolic and political legacy of the Lemoiz nuclear power station.
As they explained in the Exhibition Hall, Escala 1:1 displays the photographic research conducted by Ixone Sádaba regarding the material, symbolic, and political legacy of the Lemoiz nuclear power plant. “This work process began in 2020 when I received a grant from the Leonardo Foundation to carry out artistic research on the ruins of the nuclear power plant”, explained the artist.
Isolated for more than 40 years and on the brink of disappearance, this concrete monolith amalgamates all the layers of its history and the potential future that the battered state of this infrastructure still allows us to envision.
This project, curated by Carles Guerra, imagines a new access policy through which the subject of the power plant could become part of a public debate. Ixone Sádaba approaches this restitution exercise by screening life-sized fragments of the structures at the Lemoiz facility inside the exhibition halls of Azkuna Zentroa. Several sequences of photographic shots reconstruct the walls and views of the complex built in Cala Basordas between 1971 and 1982. T
The project as a whole also includes a replica of the 1974 observation deck originally built to accommodate site visits. Previously located on a hill near the road leading to Lemoiz, “it is now positioned at the entrance to the main exhibition space with the intention of functioning as a watchtower from which one can see past, present and future’, the curator pointed out.
Sádaba is an artist and researcher. She graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country and completed her education with a Master´s Degree in Artistic Direction from the Antonio de Nebrija University in Madrid (2001) and a Post-Graduate Course at the International Center of Photography in New York (2005).
She is the director and co-founder of Moving Artists International, and a member of other organisations such as Teja and On The Move, aimed at protecting artistic practice in an emergency context.
She was awarded the Generation 2011 Prize and was a finalist for the Sovereign Art Foundation Prize 2012, among other distinctions. Ixone was granted the prestigious BBVA Leonardo Scholarship for Researchers and Cultural Creators in 2020, and the Community of Madrid Award at the 2021 Estampa Contemporary Art Fair. She was also a researcher at the Spanish Academy in Rome in 2023 and 2024.
Ixone has held exhibitions in national and international institutions, such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Guggenheim Bilbao, and MOCCA Contemporary Art Museum in Toronto. Her work is included in the Guggenheim Bilbao, MNCARS, ARTIUM, MUSAC, Iberdrola and BBK collections, likewise in numerous private collections.
